Teach your children well

Our children are more than the school systems they attend. We are our children's first and best educators. I recently attended a seminar on education in the state of New Jersey. We toured the schools in the city of Camden and witnessed first hand the atrocious conditions the teachers and students face daily.

We strategized about how to help these struggling schools, but what was far more illuminating for me (as is often the case) is how people in the seminar processed our experience and related it to their own lives. What struck me was that the people who were parents with children in school were extremely anxious about whether or not their children were receiving the best education they could.

One woman actually said that she and her husband could not wait to get out of the town they lived in once their children graduated. "My husband and I HATE this town, " she said, "we only moved here so that our kids could get a good education. As soon as they are out, we are out!" I pressed her for some details and she said that her primary concern was that there was no diversity in this town. All of the kids in town are of the same ethnic, cultural and financial background. She said, "I hate the idea that my kids think that THIS is representative of the world."

I had similar conversations with many, many other people. I found myself trying to remind people that as parents we are still the most influential humans in our children's lives. I encouraged them not to abdicate this to a school system. If "diversity" is important to you, first of all be sure you know WHY it is, but then make friends with different kinds of people and invite them to dinner and let your children get to know them. Take your children to museums and expose them to cities and different ways of thinking. Let your children participate in your service to others. Encourage your children to think critically for themselves - sit around the dinner table and talk and listen!! Don't leave the education of your children to the school systems they attend - school is not the totality of our children's education -ultimately they will be looking at us- the life we live and who we are.